Three hot restaurants to visit in Paris in spring 2015

Deciding where to eat in Paris is just as stressful as where to eat in London. There’s just too much choice

Fortunately my husband is an assiduous researcher and came up with these three - all within (energetic) walking distance of the flat where we’re staying in the Marais.

They’re from a new breed of Parisian restaurants that offer short menus of light contemporary food - and natural wines which may be a deal-breaker for some of you (though They Are Not All Cidery as I never tire of saying. Try to keep an open mind!)

We had lunch at all three this week. Evenings would be more expensive, obviously.

Le Servan

Le Servan was the only one of the three we’d been to before back in November where we were charmed by the simple seasonal food that chef Tatiana Levha, who runs it with her sister Katia, produces. It’s an unspectacular spot off the rue Roquette, occupying a corner site that looks as if it might have been a tearoom or a rather genteel lady’s boutique in a former life. The only touch of luxury is the very beautiful Japanese knives they provide to eat your food.

Levha, who has an impeccable pedigree having worked at Arpège and L’Astrance, manages to give all her dishes an unexpected twist - tete de cochon, served crisply rather than pressed into a terrine, is worked into in an Asian-style warm salad with lightly cooked celery, cockles and pinenuts. Other entrées included a very pretty dish of leeks topped with flocons of foie gras fluttering like bonito flakes and a gravlax of trout with endive and just the right amount of orange to make you realise most places use too much. A deep sticky braise of beef and cooked and steamed carrots - still with their leaf stalks - showed she can handle the bistro repertoire too though fish (lieu jaune) on this occasion was slightly bland, less well handled than the previous time we went. Desserts might also not satisfy the sweet-toothed although I’d have been more than happy with the tatin-like caramelised apple on a slice of warm crumbly cake with salted caramel sauce if I hadn’t opted for cheese. (A simple slice of blue served with a mâche salad.) Oh, and you don’t need to take my word for it It’s one of former Figaro critic Francois Simon’s favourite spots.

Le Servan is at 32, rue St.-Maur, Paris 75011. Tel: 01 55 28 51 82 Nearest Metro Voltaire.

We drank: A bottle of Alice and Olivier de Moor’s Le Vendangeur Masqué 2013, a Chablis-like chardonnay made just outside the region, a glass of Muxagat Tinta Barrocca and an Arbois Chardonnay-Savagnin from Patrice Hugues Beguet. Servan offers the most mainstream wines of the three.

We paid: 157€ (£113.67) for 4 of which food came to 25€ a head

Yard

Yard is about 7-8 minutes up the road from Servan in an equally unglamourous area off rue de la Folie-Regnault near the Cimetière Père Lachaise. It’s even smaller than Servan with the kitchen at the back of the dining room and has more of a bistro feel about it. Tables of two, largely occupied by locals, are grouped in a block down the middle of the room.

The lunchtime formula is similar - a short, seasonally inspired menu of small - but not too small - plates: fresh radishes with fromage frais, super fresh mussels with celery, cabbage and bergamot (lovely), a great piece of seared cod cooked to perfection with broccoli rabe and anchoiade on the side and a more robust dish of crisply fried boudin noir with eggs which even my eggophile husband couldn’t finish. That would have been just 15€ but we paid an extra 3€ each for an impeccable warm tarte au citron and a blood orange salad - an eminently copiable fresh tasting dessert of sliced oranges, walnuts, dates and shredded mint.

Yard is at 6 rue de Mont-Louis, 75011 Paris. Tel: 01 40 09 70 30. Nearest Metro Philippe-Auguste. Note you can't book at lunchtime.

We drank: A couple of glasses of La Peur du Rouge, a funky chardonnay/viognier blend from Axel Prufer’s Le Temps des Cerises (23€), taking the rest back home with us. Wines by the glass start at 3€.

We paid: 59€ (£42.65) for two. The best bargain of the three.

Heimat

This recent opening from natural wine bar pioneer Pierre Jancou is In the upmarket 1st rather than the hipster 11th and is quite different in style from his previous venues, Racine and Vivant., The big stone-walled rooms and 80s-style bentwood chairs make it sparse almost to the point of being clinical though I suspect it would be more cosy in the evening. The lunch menu offers just 6 dishes including dessert and is quite fierce given what turns out to be quite a conventional-looking all-female clientele: two of the six were bulots (which we’d had the night before) and tripe. Fortunately there turned out to be a satisfyingly savoury special of veal tongue on which my husband leapt.

The other starter was a beautifully elegant plate of chinchard (horse mackerel) tartare with shaved radishes and coriander sprouts. We both opted for the non-tripey main, a spicy seafood linguine dusted with what looked like soot but turned out to be burnt sage. Weird but rather good - much nicer than it sounds. The natural wine list is hugely impressive as you’d expect from Jancou and well explained by our waitress.

Heimat is at 37 rue de Montpensier just by the Palais Royal (don’t miss the gorgeous garden). Tel 01 40 26 78 25 Nearest metros Palais Royal or Bourse

We drank: Camerlengo's Accamilla, an 'orange' malvasia from Basilicata, Les Cailloux de Paradis Quartz from the Sologne and Vuillaud's Sang Neuf 2013 a dark, robust Beaujolais. All quite hard core but the helpful waitress spoke good English and could almost certainly steer you to a less exacting choice.

We paid: 89€ (£64) for 2 courses, 3 glasses of wine and 2 coffees. Evenings are quite a bit more.

Les Déserteurs, Paris: two talented renegades

I didn’t manage to get to the highly-regarded Le Sargent Recruteur before I heard the original team had moved on so it was good to find them installed at 46 rue Trousseau, the former home of another hit restaurant, Rino*.

Les Déserteurs is obviously an ironic reference to their move.

It’s a really small space with just a few tables - in many ways more like a contemporary café than a restaurant. They’ve obviously decided the best way to make it work is to have a no-choice menu but they accompany it with a long and eclectic wine list, covering not just France but Spain, Italy and Austria.

The food is lovely - simple but imaginative with a perfect balance to every dish. A starter of raw daurade (seabream) with shredded black radish, an angelica dressing and dabs of sorrel purée flavoured with just the right amount of kaffir lime was sensationally good - beautiful to look at and full of vibrant flavours - one of the best starters I’ve had this year.

The main course of braised ham (name-checked as ‘jambon du Cantal de Mr Laborie) was boldly paired with some raw Japanese greens, fresh horseradish and creamy white polenta but they happily tweaked it for my dairy-intolerant husband substituting some mushrooms and a gorgeous quince and celeriac purée that was a brilliant match for a glass of orange wine (Ageno) he had ordered with his first course. It was also great with the main bottle we were drinking - a bright juicy Maupertuis, Les Pierres Noires.

We might have been tempted to skip dessert if they hadn’t craftily brought it round on a board beforehand - a simple but delicious apple tart, packed with apple, dusted - I think - with dried rose petals and served with a silky scoop of salted caramel ice cream. It seemed rude not to have a glass of sweet wine with it, an exotic 2010 Alois Kracher Beernenauslese

What particularly struck us was how friendly and hospitable they were. Two of the tables were celebrating birthdays - with children - and they couldn’t have been sweeter to them. Unusual for Paris, it has to be said, and for a restaurant this chic.

Lovely place. Do go.

Les Déserteurs is at 46 rue Trousseau, in the 11th arrondissment. Tel: +33 1 48 06 95 85. Our bill for 2 was 104€ though almost half of that was on wine! The fixed price three course lunch menu costs just 28€ - incredibly reasonable for food of this quality.

You may also find this post from my April 2014 trip to Paris useful

(*still looking for new premises, I gather)

My two favourite restaurants in Paris

Whenever we come to Paris, whatever new places we book, we still always make time to see two old favourites, Le Baratin and Bistrot Paul Bert.

Why? Because they’re two places that remind you that restaurants are not just about eating but the whole experience of being there. They have hinterland, character and soul.

Actually last time we booked the trendier Le 6 Paul Bert and regretted it. Not because the room wasn’t lovely or the food isn’t good but because it lacked the parent restaurant’s cosiness and theatre

The Hercule-Poirot like figure sitting in a maroon velvet smoking jacket by the entrance at what was presumably his favourite table. The two old girls (80 at least) who’d come in for a good gossip and a slap-up lunch. The young woman scribbling earnestly in a notebook with a pencil. A pencil! All Parisian life is there.

The set price lunch must be one of the best bargains in the city: 19 euros for three generous courses. And there’s choice - increasingly rare in the hipper hangouts in Paris these days. I had a generous slab of coarse, chunky terrine which arrived with a sharply dressed salad (with shallot in the vinaigrette - full marks) and a perfectly seasoned steak tartare and chips with plenty of capers. And I’m difficult to please on the steak tartare front. Dessert was a simple but delicious slice of roast pineapple and vanilla ice cream.

My husband ordered from the more expensive 38€ menu so we could have cheese. And what cheese! It arrived on a massive cheeseboard which was just left on the table. Only the fact we’d already eaten so much prevented us doing more damage to it. He also had a mound of fat white asparagus and a huge portion of veal kidneys in mustard sauce. Cooked just pink as he ordered.

You would of course spend a great deal more if you did full justice to the wine list which includes a fine selection of Burgundy, Rhone and Bordeaux. We contented ourselves with a relatively modest Beaujolais (a 2011 Descombes Brouilly) which suited the food perfectly. It was served at exactly the right temperature (cool) and again left on the table for us to help ourselves instead of having our glasses relentlessly topped up. (Does that annoy anyone else?)

Le Baratin is admittedly less immediately congenial. For a start it’s in a rougher part of town. The welcome is not particularly warm if you’re a first timer or, worse still, don’t speak French The clientele who have made the trek sometimes seem more concerned to tick the experience off than actually enjoy it. The girl on the next door table had obviously come to eat just one dish and snap it with a large SLR.

The food isn’t fancy. But it’s made from impeccably sourced ingredients and tastes like the best home cooking you’ve ever had. Which it may well be. Unusually the mains are high point - big generous platefuls of food that you dream about for months afterwards.

On a Friday evening I had a mound of roast chicken from a bird which had obviously lived - a breast, a flavourful drumstick and a deeply savoury wing along with a cascade of fresh vegetables that tasted as if they have been harvested earlier that day - spring onion, leek, carrots, potatoes and chard. No sauce, just the natural meat and vegetable juices.

My husband had a roast shank of Pyrenéean milk-fed lamb with barely wilted spinach and sweet, mealy new potatoes - hardly seasoned but so intense in flavour. Both dishes showed off our wine - Jean-François Nicq’s 2012 Les Foulards rouges Glaneurs, a pure, bright, vivid grenache, to perfection. It wasn’t on the chalked up wine list which is more by way of being a conversation-opener about what you might want to drink. It’s pretty well all natural.

Starters by contrast are simply a warm-up act - a big plate of Iberico ham (husband) and braised artichokes with lemon (me). Both tasty without stealing the show from what was to follow. They absolutely do the job.

Finally an extraordinarily good apple crumble of exactly the right texture, temperature and proportion of topping to filling. Only the cheese - an oddly bland Beaufort - was a disappointment. Our waiter sent for the gaffer who lurks behind the bar sizing up the clientele like a bird of prey*. We quaked but explained that we didn’t think it matched the quality of the rest of the ingredients. He shrugged as if we were mad but found he had taken it off the bill (€120 for two compared to €98 at the Paul Bert but Le Baratin is also cheaper at lunchtime.)

Bistrot Paul Bert is easy to love. It’s the French bistro of dreams. The Baratin less so but if you succumb to its offbeat charms you’ll be as hooked as we are. As many have remarked it's more like eating in someone's home than a restaurant. No wonder so many chefs hang out there.

These two Paris institutions have been there for years but won’t go on for ever. Philippe and his wife Raquel who presides over the Baratin kitchen must at least be thinking about retirement and it won’t be the same when they’ve gone. Go while you have the chance.

Bistrot Paul Bert is at 18 rue Paul Bert. Tel: 01 43 72 24 01 Nearest Metro: Faidherbe Chaligny

Le Baratin is at 3 rue Jouye-Rouve. Tel: 01 43 49 39 70. Nearest Metro: Pyrenées

NB. There is another Paul Bert and another Baratin in Paris. Make sure you go to the right ones.

* That said he did recognise us this time, cracked a smile and gave us a table big enough for 4. We've obviously passed the test.

Thai tapas in Paris at Le Mary Celeste - updated March 2015

Eating Thai tapas in a city like Paris represents everything I dislike about eating out - a mish-mash of cooking styles, food you can eat anywhere - and yet I loved it. (Apparently the chef has moved on. See my update below from a subsequent visit in March 2015)

My husband, the master planner of the trip but not normally a Thai food fan was insistent we should go back to Le Mary Celeste, a restaurant we'd only managed to have a drink and a couple of oysters in on our last trip.

His meticulous researches (see How to plan a food trip to Paris) had revealed that it was now the scene in the Marais where we’re staying. It would be convenient, he argued, on the first night.

When I saw the menu I thought ‘Ha! He’ll hate it’ - apart from the natural wine list. There was next to no meat and far too many vegetables for a red-blooded Welshman. Of course I was proved wrong.

Apart from the oysters which are the speciality of the place dishes are in fact slightly bigger than tapas - more like raciones - but still designed for sharing as our very sweet waitress explained. (The service is unusually friendly for Paris.) The tables are so small they have to be served one by one.

The first dish - roast cauliflower with some chilli-infused fish sauce, hazelnuts and herbs (coriander) was unlikely but a real winner, the sort of dish you want to work out how to make at home. ‘Thai tacos’ (below) with a larb-style pork patty and pickles and chilli mayo was a dribblingly messy sandwich of a dish I’d happily go back for. Oeufs du diable, a spicy riff on egg mayonnaise was a spicy mouthful of bright fresh ginger, onions and crunchy fried rice. Gorgeous. Only some rather strange slabs of rice cake with a fiery radish dressing didn’t quite come off. My other half chomped his way contentedly through the meal admiring the chef’s boldness with seasoning. Wonders will never cease.

The wine we drank - a Tête de Gondole, a crisp blend of chenin and sauvignon from Domaine Chahut et Prodiges, frankly struggled to keep up with the onslaught. We’d have probably done better to order a cocktail which was obviously what most of the young clientele were going for. I was particularly tempted by the Koh Garden (Aalborg aquavit, homemade kaffir lime leaf and galangal syrup and lime) though it might have possibly been an overload with all that punchy food. And they cost 12€ (£9.88/$13.63) which would have undoubtedly bumped up the cost of our otherwise very reasonable €59 (£48.57) meal though remember French bills include service.

The menu changes daily so we might even go again during our stay. If we can get in, that is. It gets rammed so you need to book during the limited time they take bookings - or be prepared to queue.

Update from a subsequent visit in March 2015

Returning to the Mary Celeste a year later I’m not quite sure why I dubbed it Thai. Sure there are Asian inflections but not specifically Thai ones.* Only the oysters and oeufs du diable still remain on the menu and are as good as ever - the rest was a bit of a mixed bag.

A chickpea salad with beetroot, feta and mint was fresh and tasty as was a plate of panisse with chimichurri sauce but an ‘assiette de broccolis’ was tough and undercooked with barely a smear of the advertised smoked haddock purée.

The wine list is more extensive than on earlier visits - we drank a delicious pet nat (petillant sparkling wine) called X bulles from Muscadet producer Vincent Caillé which suited the food perfectly.

Mary Celeste is noisy and cramped but it has an incredible buzz. Think of it more as a bar to have a drink and a couple of snacks than a restaurant and you won’t be disappointed. Our bill was a reasonable €76.20 (£54) for two but we could have spent less.

*I've since learnt the chef has moved on.

Le Mary Celeste is at 1 rue Commines, 75003 Paris 09 80 72 98 83. They open at 2pm but don’t start serving food till 7pm and you can’t book after 7.30pm.